Anchor
by ckmono
Summary: One shot story. What does Roxas make of his life? WARNING: Axel and Roxas shounenai. MAJOR KINGDOM HEARTS 2 SPOILDERS.


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**Warning: MAJOR KINGDOM HEARTS 2 SPOILERS. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.**

**Disclaimer:**_ Kingdom Hearts and all its sequels, merchandise, etc. do not belong to me. They belong to Tetsuya Nomura, Sqaure-Enix, and all the companies associated with this project. Thanks to them for bringing us an awesome game and fandom. _

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**_Anchor_**

If Roxas ever stopped to _really_ think about it, he knew that he was never sure of anything in his life, for all his bravado.

_Boss, what exactly is a Nobody?_ Xenmas chuckled dramatically—Roxas hated that, he wished the older order members could just _get to the damn point_—and asked him _what is there to define, when you're a 'nobody'_?

"Everyone hates the Nobodies." Larxene had answered casually, "They'd hate you too if they knew what you are. They'd try to kill you. Not that it matters." Roxas's face became guarded as she stood up from the couch, "Besides, you don't matter to anyone, not even the Order. You wield the Keyblade; they only love you because of that. Much more interesting than if you just came by yourself."

"Stop trying to screw up his mind." Axel drawled lazily, but his eyes were hard.

"Am I?" Larxene cocked her head playfully, "I thought that was the _truth_."

"Almost everyone is screwed up around here, we don't need another nutcase." Axel looked Larxene squarely in the eye, "Besides, you wouldn't want word to get to the boss that _you_ are messing up the Chosen of the Keyblade, would you?"

Immediately, Larxene backed down. "I'm sorry, Roxas." She wheedled, and by her smile, Roxas knew she will never be, "I honestly didn't mean it so much. But you _do_ know that's part of it all, right?"

"I asked you what a Nobody is, not what _I_ am. I know what I am." Roxas tried to look straight at Larxene, but all of a sudden he wasn't really seeing her, and her voice was mixed with—his own?—inside him.

_Do you know? Aren't you asking because you **don't** know?_

"Sorry I had to play along with her," Axel told him later, "but she's not lying either. It's not too far from the truth."

"Is that what you think?" Roxas asked him.

"Hell no. Do I look like it?"

"Just making sure."

There was a pause, in which Roxas looked up apprehensively, but could not move his eyes further up than Axel's teardrop tattoos.

"Look," Roxas felt a long arm, corded with lean muscles like steel wires, wind around his shoulders, "You never have to make sure with me, alright?"

"You think Demyx would know?"

"No, he'd start gushing about how he couldn't do this nor do that with music because he's a Nobody."

"Then do you—" The last word was lost Axel silenced him with a slightly forceful kiss. Roxas felt Axel's tongue push past his willing lips, push back his curious tongue.

"You got a lot of questions, you know? Just relax and have some fun, take life as it comes." Roxas looked up when they break away, and meet Axel's eyes, soft and playful; his mouth was turned up in an exasperated smirk.

Roxas smiled back. As he looked out the window and caught sight of the moon, almost a full heart-shape, he thought about the answers he'd been given.

They weren't even answers to his question.

---

"Have you decided?"

For a moment, Roxas considered ignoring Axel. He should know, it was obvious, Roxas had told him _so many times_.

"I want to know—why did the Keyblade choose me?" Fine, he'll play along.

"If you betray the Order, you'll die."

"No one would be sad." _Damn. There goes my poker face_. _Luxord would be disappointed_. There was something about Axel that always made him instinctively shed his guard.

Roxas paused, and _hoped_ for Axel to do something, anything. Yell at him. Grab him and kiss him, hard. Or fight him so they could beat the shit out of each other. Then, they could talk some sense into each other in its place, and organize this _mess_.

But Axel didn't do anything, and Roxas continued resolutely—or as resolutely as someone without a heart could be. He tried not to look back, because then he would see Axel's face, and he wasn't _sure_ that the angry, almost desperate expression was _true_.

Roxas tried to believe it; really, he did. And Axel knew that. But Roxas didn't want to be more insecure their love—_could love exist like this?_—than he already is.

In the oncoming rain, he imagined he heard a reply from Axel.

---

Roxas' world was swinging wildly on a cruel pendulum, shifting from one reality to another, the line between them impossible to define. When he fights Axel in the underground labs, he thought with bitter humour that _this must be a dream_; maybe when he woke up a new Twilight would begin again.

The fires dissipated, but Roxas only half-feels its heat. He looked at Axel, across the room, panting from the ferocity of the battle, trying to prove to him that he was _somebody_ that belonged _somewhere_. Then, something in the green turmoil of his eyes and his rough voice, hoarse with emotion, made him remember.

"_No one would be sad."_

He wanted something _stable_, like the Axel's forthright laughter and cocky tone of voice. Or, if he dared to remember it fully, _Axel's love_. In the chaotic battleground of his half-emotions, something so simple Roxas thought it was an illusion, surfaced.

"…_I would." **I would be sad, Roxas. Don't you understand?**_

"Axel…" Roxas half-breathed out the other man's name, almost in wonder. _You've always been sure of everything. Of us. Of me._

Roxas caught Axel's eyes as he looks up, and sees the _relief_ in his eyes. _Finally, I've found you._

"Let's meet again when you're reborn." Axel was solid; something Roxas held onto when the world threatened to drown him—or when he tried to drown himself in the world. Now, Roxas thought, the waters were too deep, too far from the shore to drop any anchors.

But Axel expected an answer, so Roxas answered as best he could.

"Alright. I'll wait for you."

Axel smiled, then looked away, "You idiot," He said with no venom, "You'll be reborn, but…" The rest was lost, muffled by the darkness. But Roxas knew the rest anyway.

_But you won't wait for me. You can't._

---

Sora's mind was _really_ cramped. He thought about Riku, Kairi, Goofy, Donald, the King, and whether there's enough food and potions and ethers in his knapsack. He thought about Keyblade fighting combos. Sometimes Sora began to reminisce about the worlds he'd seen, about his home. Then, if he felt like it, Sora tried to fill up that seemingly empty gap of time within his mind, where only one word was present—_Namine_.

Roxas wished sometimes that Sora could just shut up and let _him_ think.

Then again, this was Sora's mind. _He_ was Sora.

_Damn. Sensitive topic._ Roxas didn't really have anywhere to hide. If he focused too much on himself, he would be back at square one.

Focusing on Namine was too obvious. No doubt Sora would sense it, like someone was trying to sit with him on a couch that's too small. Besides, Namine was scattered in a kaleidoscope of messy crayon scrawls and broken chain links. Axel was somewhere in that mess too, a strand of crimson hair here, a piece of paper with a green eye on it there.

Roxas wasn't sure what to think of Axel when he was in Sora. He knew Axel always had a way of smashing multiple motives together. Axel was trying to win Sora to his side using Kairi, _and_ he was trying to turn Sora back into a 'Heartless'.

Axel _knew_, that sneaky bastard. He _knew_ Roxas would never be sure, would never regain his footing the moment he left. So why not let _Sora_ focus on what Roxas, and subsequently what Axel himself, could benefit from?

Roxas had Axel's intentions all figured out. In retrospect, however, he knew that if he hadn't miscalculated, then Axel wouldn't _be_ Axel at all.

---

Sora watched Axel leap away from him with a confident smirk. When he dropped his chakrams beside himself and started burning, an overwhelming sense of dreaded realization choked Sora. Something was twisting frantically inside him, trying to get out, trying _so hard_ to scream but _couldn't_. He wanted to reassure that someone. _It's okay, Axel knows what he's doing, but it's not okay **because** Axel knows what he's doing, it's okay, no it's not, no no no no no, it wasn't supposed to be like this, there has to be another way, stop Axel, stop, stop, sto—_

"Whoa…" Even as Sora marveled at the empty battleground, something was still twisting inside him, almost smashing against his mind, insisting that he _turn; forget about the damn battleground, turn!_

"Hey, you'll disappear!" _Anyone could see that, you idiot…wait. Am I calling myself an idiot?_

_If you betray the Order, you'll die._

"Well, used all my power, didn't I? There's no other way. Besides, a Nobody is 'someone who shouldn't exist', right?" Axel glances at him, and Sora swore the man must be looking _past_ him at something else.

_No one would be sad_._ Right back at you, Roxas._

Sora felt like punching Axel. It must have shown on his face, because Axel snorted.

"Ah, don't feel bad about it, alright? Look, go to Kairi—oh, well, sorry about being mean to her and all."

"If you feel that way, then apologize to Kairi yourself."

"Can't do that," Axel drawled, and Sora felt like punching him again, "Don't know if it'll come from the heart. I have no heart…" He trailed off into a small laugh.

"Why are you doing this?" _Yes, I want to know too._

A small smile and a look of ferocious victory spread across his face. _Told you, I'd go with you all the way._

"I wanted to see Roxas again."

_Damn you, Axel._ Sora felt, for some reason, like crying. He had half a mind to cast his most powerful healing spells, or use that mega-potion he had bought, even if it's futile.

"See…I liked that guy." Sora felt Axel look past him again, and he was being pushed away by that look. Sora was looking at someone, crying, _unable to do anything, not sure if he was meant to do something_. Axel looked away from him, and the vision was broken.

"'If I was with him, it seemed like I had a heart too'…I felt like that." A reminiscent smile appeared on Axel's face, and he turned to Sora again.

"Felt like that around you too." He commented, "The same…"

_The same what, Axel?_ Sora wanted to ask, but somehow, he knew it wasn't _him_ asking.

"Kairi's in the castle dungeons." Axel said suddenly, breaking his thoughts, "Use this."

A portal materialized. There was a crackling sound and Axel smirked, his eyes softening with—comfort? Reassurance? Sora wasn't sure what he was looking at, but he thought it was safe to say that Axel was looking at whatever had just broken inside him somehow.

---

When Roxas stopped to think, he realized that Axel was not much different from him; not sure of anything but the present moment. _Maybe it was the amount of teen-angst that made the difference._

Roxas felt like a ship, which had left the harbor and struck out into unknown waters. He'd gotten swept along, until he almost fell off the end into nothingness without knowing it. He clung to the edge, wondering bitterly how long he could hold on until Sora overwhelmed him.

Then Axel was there, anchoring himself in Sora's life and dragging against him, both a hindrance and help to Roxas. Axel came, and didn't care if the waters were too deep, or the Order. In the end, Axel was still so _sure_.

_All I have to do is stick_ _a wedge in Sora's world, pin his mind down long enough for Roxas to get up. Simple as that, nothing to it._

Reality warped as Roxas broke free, making use of what Axel had given him. Keyblades clashed, and suddenly Roxas and Sora were breaking away and coming together again, alone in a place where they were the only witnesses.

"Who is this?" Sora demanded angrily, trying to see past the bangs of Roxas' hair, and the cross of the Oblivion and Oathkeeper.

"One who lives in the Darkness." Roxas replied cryptically as they leapt away from each other again.

"What…Riku?" Surprise and hope, with a veil of alarm, crosses over Sora's face.

_DiZ. Riku. My search. All different, yet the same._ "Riku…is a name I have defeated."

"What?"

Roxas ignored the question.

"Show me—the reason you were chosen."

The heat of the duel courses through Roxas. A small part of his mind wondered if, somewhere in the infinity of the surrounding darkness, there was a wild blast of crimson and heated green eyes, flitting from one spot to another in a strange sort of dance.

Roxas didn't need people to look out for him; he was no 'incompetent, unresponsive twerp', as Saix once so nicely put it. Still, it would be nice to look forward to something, _someone_ he was _absolutely sure about_ when the end finally came.

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**Author's Notes:** Comments, reviews, and criticisms very much appreciated. I seem to lacking in the technical depaprtment of writing, judging from previous attempts.


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